Here are some extracts from Judi’s final column, dated May 1:
This is the last edition of the Weston & Somerset Mercury that I will edit. After 25 years at the helm I am retiring from the paper.
After training on the Bristol Evening Post and working on papers in Devon and Hampshire I was lucky enough, in 1987, to become editorial director of the Weston Mercury and, a year later, I took over the editor’s reins.
Jack Frampton sold the business to Community Media Ltd in 1988. The following year the paper went from broadsheet to tabloid and, 10 years later, the on-site printing press, which could only print black and white with ‘spot’ colour, was sold and our printing went to a full colour press outside the town.
There have been many highs and lows for me in the past 25 years, fortunately more of the former.
We set out to become a campaigning newspaper, fighting small and big battles that really mattered in the town. A high point was in 1992 - we gained the top accolade when reporter Andy Sambidge was named the UK Press Gazette Campaigning Journalist of the Year. Our campaign against a Mayor-elect who resigned after we revealed his dubious role in a planning application won the day.
In the early 1990s we launched an appeal to buy a CT Scanner for Weston General Hospital and raised £250,000 in just 18 months.
The Mercury clashed with Jerry Wiggin, the town’s standing MP, in 1997. In a ‘leader’ column we called for his resignation when he tabled amendments to a Bill in the name of Sebastian Coe MP without asking him. Sir Jerry retired from politics at the next election.
A front page picture in March 1989 gave me our best-selling paper for years. Players from Hornets Rugby Club lined up along the seafront exposing the club emblem which had been tattooed on their bottoms. It remained the top selling Mercury until the death of Jill Dando in 1999.
Jill died on April 26, 1999, and the list she had made of guests to invite to her wedding became the list of people to attend her funeral.
Only a couple of years before, part of a ‘This is Your Life’ programme in her honour had been filmed in our offices and print room. Her brother Nigel, who, like Jill, had trained on the Mercury, and dad Jack, who had also worked here, asked us to prepare the official tribute paper to Jill.
That week, I sent a photograph to Cliff Richard. It had been taken years before in the newsroom by Mark Atherton and showed Jill sitting at her typewriter with a Cliff Richard calendar hanging on the wall. I asked Cliff if he would come down to Weston to perform and help us raise much-needed cash for Weston Hospicecare - of which Jill was patron.
The reply came quickly. The next day his agent telephoned and said ‘yes’ and the following February a ball raised £67,458. The cash was used to appoint a consultant in palliative medicine for the charity.
In 2001, at a Hospicecare HQ meeting in Montpelier, we were discussing creating a memorial for Jill in the town. I remembered a conversation I had at the ball with Jill’s Crimewatch co-host Nick Ross, who was friendly with TV mogul Peter Bazalgette. Peter was heavily involved with the hit BBC series Ground Force. I returned to the office, contacted Nick, was put in touch with the Ground Force producers and Jill’s Garden was filmed that summer with Alan Titchmarsh, Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh creating a fabulous garden in Grove Park.
An exclusive interview with David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst, who had been filming Only Fools and Horses in town was also a highlight.
A more amusing and frivolous occasion came in 2002 when we helped organise a record attempt on the longest Zorba dance in the world as part of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. It stretched along the seafront and provided a particularly amusing hour as people attempted to dance, in unison, in a very, very long line!
In 2004 I had the honour of being presented with the Borough Shield by the then Mayor of Weston, Roger Perks. It still hangs on the wall of my office and will be one of the few things I take with me when I leave.
I have never shied away from constructive criticism or from printing letters putting a different point of view. A good debate, sparked by a newspaper comment, helps make the world go round. It’s good to defend people’s rights and it’s a journalist’s job to try to make a difference.
I have always tried to run a good, professional, independent newspaper and I believe we should put readers at the heart of everything we do, delivering engaging and informative content and trying to make the town a better place in which to live and work.
All of us here recognise the unique relationship that a newspaper has with its community and do all we can to make that relationship one that works for the good.
One sign of a good newspaper should be its unflinching determination to highlight the bad behaviour of arrogant politicians - in fact there are some in our own town who will probably be celebrating my retirement today.
Soaring among my career highs are the great group of people in Mercury Towers that I will miss. I have lost count of the numerous trainees who have passed through the newsdesk and gone on to forge successful careers in journalism in the UK and abroad. Many keep in touch, which is fabulous - and flattering.
One person, who I recruited as a trainee 23 years ago, is the longest serving member of my team. Jerard Hurst rose through the reporting ranks, on to the sub editing desk, to be deputy editor for many years before taking on the role of production editor. I have always been grateful for his help and judgement, his design skills and friendship. We leave 32 Waterloo Street on the same day!
If you have passion, which all good reporters need, journalism is not a job, it’s a vocation, and to enjoy it and succeed you need to love it.
Fortunately, I am leaving the paper in good hands. The person taking over the editor’s reins today, Simon Angear, is a ‘local lad’ who was educated in Weston. Simon is enthusiastic and committed to the area, to highlighting its many qualities and campaigning to making sure YOUR voice is heard.
